The frigate Africaine had been sent from Rochefort early in 1801 with more than 400 soldiers for the Egyptian garrison, and by February had reached the Mediterranean Sea, Commodore Saulnier seeking to pass along the North African coast to avoid patrolling Royal Navy warships.

In an engagement lasting two hours, the French ship was reduced to a wallowing wreck as broadsides from Phoebe tore through the hull, rigging and the soldiers packed on the decks: by the time Africaine surrendered, 200 men were dead and another 143 wounded.

Bonaparte, conscious of his promises to send reinforcements to the beleaguered army in Egypt, planned a series of expeditions to the region to restore morale and numbers to the expeditionary force, drawn from troops and naval units available on the French Atlantic coast.

[3] The largest force consisted of 5,000 soldiers and nine ships under Rear-Admiral Honoré Ganteaume and sailed from Brest in January 1801, but this squadron had been preceded by two frigates from Rochefort, Africaine and Régénérée.

[4] Africaine was a large modern 40-gun frigate with 715 men aboard but the huge quantity of supplies made the vessel slow and unresponsive and vulnerable to attack by a more agile opponent.

Phoebe, carrying 239 men aboard (22 below the required complement), was operating from the British base at Port Mahon on Menorca on a routine patrol between there and Gibraltar, and had just passed Ceuta to the south on the last leg of the journey when at 16:00 the lookout sighted Africaine.

[7] Saulnier was killed, Général de division Edme Desfourneaux badly wounded and many of their subordinates including all of the naval lieutenants, made casualties; almost all of the rigging had been torn away, most of the guns smashed from their mounts and the decks literally heaped with dead bodies.

[5] Eventually the senior surviving officer, Captain Jean-Jacques Magendie, who had suffered a severe head wound, authorised the colours to be struck at 21:30, approximately 60 nautical miles (110 km) east of Gibraltar, thereby surrendering the ship.

[7] The action was highly praised by the station commander Captain Manley Dixon, who stated in a letter to the Admiralty dated 10 March 1801 "that more Skill or effective Gunnery were never displayed in any Combat than in the present Instance".

Without supplies and reinforcements the French army in Egypt could not effectively resist the major British invasion of the country in March 1801 and after a brief campaign was forced to capitulate at Alexandria in August.